Difference between revisions of "Why Do Women Live Longer Than Men"

Revision as of 15:26, 11 January 2022

Everywhere in the world women live longer than men - but this was not always the case. The available data from rich countries shows that women didn't live longer than men in the 19th century. What makes women live more than men do today and how has this advantage increased in the past? There isn't much evidence and we're only able to provide partial solutions. Although we know that there are biological, behavioral and environmental variables that play an integral role in women living longer than men, we don't know how much each factor contributes.

We know that women live longer than men, regardless of weight. But this isn't due to the fact that certain non-biological aspects have changed. These variables are evolving. Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Certain are more complicated. For example, there is evidence that in rich countries the female advantage increased in part because infectious diseases used to affect women disproportionately a century ago, so advances in medicine that reduced the long-term health burden from infectious diseases, especially for survivors, ended up raising women's longevity disproportionately.

Everywhere in the world women tend to live longer than men
The first chart below shows life expectancy at birth for men and women. As you can see, all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a new boy.1

Interestingly, this chart shows that although the female advantage exists everywhere, the cross-country differences are large. In Russia women are 10 years older than males; while in Bhutan the gap is less than half one year.

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The advantage of women in terms of life expectancy was lower in countries with higher incomes that it is today.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The following chart shows the male and female life expectancies at the birth in the US during the period 1790-2014. Two aspects stand out.

There is an upward trend. as well as women in the US are living much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

Second, the gap is increasing: While the advantage of women in life expectancy used to be tiny but it has risen significantly in the past.

You can check if these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by clicking the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and اضيق وضعية للجماع Sweden.